Looking for Guidance on Adding Services to OpenEMR to a Multispecialty Clinic

Hello Everyone :hugs:,

In I set up OpenEMR to run a multispecialty clinic, I could use advice from those who had worked on similar projects before. The departments which make up our clinic are cardiology, orthopaedic surgery, paediatric care, and general practice.

Although I’ve been able to get the basic configuration running appropriately, I would appreciate some help in the following specific areas:

Making Workflows to Various Specialties:

How can I best adapt the workflows to meet the unique demands of every specialty in the clinic? Can you provide any examples or best practices? :thinking:

Reports and SOAP Note Templates:

For every department, we have distinct templates for SOAP notes and report forms. Is there a simple way to make and keep these templates? Any advice on how to make sure they are thorough and easy to use? :thinking:

Integration with Labs and Diagnostic Tools:

Specialised diagnostic instruments are utilised by certain departments (e.g., ECG for heart disease, X-ray for orthopaedics). Which method of integrating these products with OpenEMR is the best one? :thinking: Any suggestions for lab integrations would also be beneficial.

User Role Management and Permissions:

In order to guarantee functionality and security, how should I set up user privileges and access rights given the variety of staff members (nurses, doctors, and administrative staff)? :thinking:
It would be really helpful to have role configuration examples that have been successful in similar circumstances.

Instruction and Assistance:

What are some excellent techniques for teaching employees how to use OpenEMR effectively, particularly when their levels of computer proficiency differ? Do you offer any tips for specific training materials or resources? :thinking:

I also check this :point_right: https://www.open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/Setting_Up_Your_Clinic_mlops

Thank you :pray: in advance. Any advice or experience that you can provide will be very helpful in making OpenEMR ideal for our clinic’s need. I’m delighted to hear your responses!

Hi @La_watson1
I have a degree in HI, have been a nurse in my time, and have delivered OpenEMR user support for appx 10 years. I’m not a dev or an MD but I do have some opinions on the questions you ask. However, the ‘help’ you are asking for really should be the product of a comprehensive analysis of how you do things, not some post to a forum. One other thing: allow me to point out that you posted in the Inpatient Development category, and the stock Comunity Edition of OpenEMR is intended and optimized for outpatient use. Making it suitable for inpatient will have a large effect on how much customization you need.

Making Workflows to Various Specialties - OpenEMR’s clinical workflows are as modular and generic as possible. The main stages of those workflows can have customized data collection forms added for particular tasks in any arbitrary specialty which can be accessed in any order you wish.

Reports and SOAP Note Templates - yes there is. Depending on the type of data form they are accessed from different places in the EMR, and each type of document can be customized with varying levels of effort and expertise, ranging from a computer- savvy clerk to a fully qualified php developer. As far as making them thorough and easy to use, you really must have your requirements of the form exquisitely articulated when you build the form and have some expertise designing its usage- can’t just have endless lines of checkboxes, radio buttons and dropdowns.

Integration with Labs and Diagnostic Tools - OpenEMR has interfaces with labs and several diagnostic tools; you would do well to search this forum for posts about the particular services and tools you have in mind.

User Role Management and Permissions - again, you are asking for specifics that cannot be provided without analysis of your clinical environment. The default ACLs coded into OpenEMR provide access to the functionalities most commonly associated with the names of the roles; see here for more:
https://www.open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/Role_Based_Menus
https://www.open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/Access_Controls_Listing

As far as examples you might look at the ACLs used in the OpenEMR public demos, they’re a good example of generic defaults:
https://ten.openemr.io/c/openemr/interface/login/login.php?site=default

Instruction and Assistance - Best practices for training are always a balance between the most effective and the most affordable. Absolute best is you locate an expert and have them work 1:1 with an individual on the tasks they will be performing for production. Second best is you find good documentation, study it then reinforce that with less intensive 1:1 training.

OpenEMR has vendors such as the one I work with, and others, who can provide good/ expert user training as a paid support service.
The good documentation is more difficult because of the FOSS nature of the tutorial repositories.

However, here is the primary docs repo: OpenEMR 7.0.2 Users Guide - OpenEMR Project Wiki
for your edification.

And I noticed the doc you’ve been reading applies to the OpenEMR 3 release versions ago. Try this one:
https://www.open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/OpenEMR_7_New_Clinic_Setup

Best- Harley